Forgotten - The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War by Linda Hervieux

Author:Linda Hervieux [Hervieux, Linda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-09-09T22:00:00+00:00

PART III

CHAPTER 8

The Greatest Hour

If a Nazi bird nestles in my lines—he won’t nestle nowhere else.

—CLEVELAND HAYES, 320TH BARRAGE BALLOON BATTALION

SOMEWHERE IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

EARLY MORNING, JUNE 6, 1944

Waverly Woodson squinted into the distance. From the deck of the boat, he could see little. A thick cloud blanket hung overhead, and the heavy air pressed in from all sides. Drenched fatigues clung to Woodson’s weary limbs. For hours now he had peered into the blackness. A stripe of pink brightened the eastern horizon. First light. In the dark, choppy waters of the English Channel, Woodson found serenity, even beauty. It would be one of his last tranquil moments on this very long day.

It was a strange place to find peace. Above, the sky hummed with Allied planes, and all around, thousands of vessels of every size steamed toward France. On Woodson’s ship, men were gray with seasickness. Their single army-issue vomit bag was long used up, so they heaved into their steel helmets, then tipped them over the side to be rinsed in the cresting swells. When that effort proved too much, they heaved wherever they could. Puddles of sick pooled at their ankles. The metal boat pitched forward and back with each roll. Dying would be better than this. Some of them said that.

The storied Channel had thwarted generations of marauders to keep Britannia safe, at least most of the time. The Roman emperor Caligula’s soldiers mutinied rather than sail these waters thick with mermaids. On this day, the invaders were heading in the opposite direction, their mission to conquer a continent systematically crushed by an enemy for whom freedom meant very little. To Woodson, freedom meant a great deal. He had lived it fully for the first time in a friendly village in Oxfordshire, where he’d met white people pleased to be his friend and a postmistress happy to dance with him. That might not have seemed like much to other men, but Woodson would never forget it. For him, there was no ambivalence entwined in fighting for his country, even if that country didn’t support equality for all its citizens. If you asked Woodson, he would tell you: This was a war in which he believed with all his heart. He was in this boat, in this war, to defeat the Nazis and their brutally racist worldview.

The noise, varied and constant, grew louder as a swarm of B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators droned above the fleet. In the distance, the thunder of explosions echoed, and every man prayed his aim was good. The Allied bombs were seeking to smash the enemy bunkers, pillboxes, trenches, hideaways, and deadly obstacles spanning the French coast. Hitler had built this vast system of fortifications—the “Atlantic Wall”—which he imagined would seal western Europe from an assault exactly like this one. It was a tactical error. The Führer’s other epic mistake was underestimating his opponents. Allied fighters were better trained and supplied, and far more committed to victory than the German High Command expected.

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